33 Environmentally Friendly Eating Habits

33 Environmentally Friendly Eating Habits

The Sustainable Food Movement is sweeping the country. Farmer’s markets, organic produce, genetically-modified foods, cage-free eggs— they’re all becoming part of the cultural lingo. While a lot of this conversation focuses around whether organic foods are better for people’s health, it turns out these trends are also good for the planet. Read on to learn about the 33 environmentally friendly eating habits that are making a difference for our bodies and our earth.

Green Eats — Your ACtion Plan

Sustainable eating doesn’t have to be hard, and it also doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing: Adopting just a few of the items on this list can make a big impact. For instance, if one person chose to use reusable bags for the rest of their life, beginning at the age of 25, they could save more than 21,000 plastic bags. Point being: You can make a difference.

At the Store

1. Reuse it. Bring a reusable bag on your next shopping trip, and you’ve already helped out the planet. The United States alone uses about 100 billion new plastic bags each year, and (brace yourself) this massive production costs 12 million barrels of oil. Worldwide, only about 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled — which means that the rest end up in landfills, oceans, or elsewhere in the environment. Why does it matter? There are several reasons: Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, but light exposure can degrade them enough to release toxic polymer particles — most of which end up in the ocean. Approximately one million birds and 100,000 turtles and other sea animals die of starvation each year after ingesting discarded plastics and other trash debris, which block their digestive tracks. And public agencies spend millions of dollars on litter clean-up each year. (In case you’re wondering, paper bags aren’t much better. Each year, 14 million trees are cut down to make paper shopping bags via a process that requires even more energy than the making of plastic bags.)

2. Strip down. Look for products with minimal packaging (like unwrapped produce or meat straight from the deli counter or butcher). Excess packaging is often made out of unsustainable materials and contributes to waste that ends up in landfills. Perhaps the worst culprit is polystyrene (alias Styrofoam), which is a suspected carcinogen and is manufactured through an energy-intensive process that creates hazardous waste and greenhouse gases Final Report on Carcinogens Background Document for Styrene. National Toxicology Program. Report on Carcinogens Background Document, 2008 Sep;(8-5978):i-398.

3. Don’t buy the bottle.Millions of tons of plastic are used to produce billions of plastic water bottles each year. Save money and lessen waste by drinking tap water from a reusable water bottle. Worried about your health? Try a water filter, or take courage from the fact that a lot of bottled water is likely no better than what’s on tap.

4. Shop different. Choose to give your money to stores that demonstrate care for the planet, both in their company practices and in the food selections they provide. Look for a selection of local and organic foods as well as store practices that limit waste (think: doors on the refrigerated sections so that energy isn’t wasted, minimal and/or recyclable packaging, and a store-wide recycling program).

6. Eat more of it. Eat more produce than any other food category, and you’ve already made an impact for the planet (not to mention your body!).

7. Go organic.The definition of organic can be a little confusing, but food labels can help. Certified organic foods are grown and processed using farming methods that recycle resources and promote biodiversity and without the use of synthetic pesticides, bioengineered genes, and petroleum- or sewage-sludge-based fertilizers. (Weird. Who wouldn’t want their food grown in sewage sludge?) Though their benefits to the environment have a long-term payoff, organic foods can be pricier — if you’re on a budget, find out which foods are most worth buying organic, and limit your organic purchases to the ones that make the biggest impact.

8. Eat it raw.Chomp down on a raw carrot instead of boiling or sautéing it, and save energy that would otherwise have been used to power cooking appliances.

9. Eat in season. Seasonal nomming allows you to eat locally — and we’ve already covered how important local purchasing is for the environment. Check out what’s growing nearby right now.

10. Preserve it.Want to eat more locally, but love to eat strawberries year-round? Learn how to preserve fruits and vegetables so you can eat locally grown produce all year long (it’s bound to impress Grandma, too).

11. Grow it. You don’t need to live in the wild to grow your own fruits and veggies. Join a community garden, or, if you’re cramped for space, create a vertical garden right inside your window.

12. Get some community support. Not into the idea of growing your own? Consider joining a CSA (short for Community Supported Agriculture), which allows you to reap the benefits of locally grown produce without getting your hands dirty.

Meat

13. Eat less of it.Industrially farmed meat has the highest impact of any other food product on the environment. In addition to the tips outlined below, consider making meat less of a staple in your diet. Can’t give up the stuff? Try going meat free for just one day per week (or one meal per week if you’re really attached).

14. You guessed it: Buy local.We’ve said it before and we’re saying it again: Buying local is a great way to cut down on the environmental impact of your food. Just imagine how much energy it would take to haul a cow from, say, New Zealand, in comparison to transporting it from the local butcher shop.

15. Go organic.Wait, what?When it comes to meat, the definition of “organic” changes a little. Obviously, chickens aren’t grown in the soil, nor are they (we hope!) conventionally grown with pesticides. Rather, organic livestock must have access to the outdoors and cannot be supplemented with antibiotics or growth hormones.

16. Be anti-antibiotics. It’s common practice these days to feed growth-producing antibiotics to animals raised for meat, but this results in health risks for the animals — and, by extension, the people who eat them.

17. Go out to pasture. Pasture-raised livestock make less of a negative environmental impact. They’re also treated more humanely than their industrially raised counterparts.

Seafood

18. Look for the label. Figuring out how to buy sustainable seafood is tough: Turns out “wild caught” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s environmentally friendly, after all, while some farmed fish are. The easiest way to sort through all the confusion is to look for the label of the Marine Stewardship Council, which guarantees that a product has successfully met requirements for sustainability.

19. Know your fish.Check out theseguides to figure out which fish are least endangered and most likely to be farmed sustainably, and use them to guide your buying decisions.

20. Be a patriot.Buy US caught or farmed fish. It’s as close as you can get to buying “local” when you live in a land-locked state, and it also means that the product has had the chance to be reviewed by the Marine Stewardship Council, so you have a better sense of the conditions under which the fish were caught.

21. Try something new.Instead of eating the ever-popular Alaskan salmon along with everybody else at the restaurant, expand your diet and distribute your impact by trying different varieties of fish. Check out these alternatives to some of our fishy favorites — you might even find a variety that you like more than tuna. In the process, you’ll reduce the risk of endangering key species.

25. Cut back. The production of one pound of cheese might produce upwards of 11 pounds of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activities and a big driver of climate change. As with meat, you can quickly lessen your environmental impact simply by eating less dairy. Bonus: eliminating common staples from your diet one or two days a week is a chance to experiment with fun new recipes.

At a Restaurant

26. Order from the tap.Cut down on packaging; ask for tap water instead of bottled. Likewise, save the beer bottle and order on tap.

27. Eat local.Just because you’re not at the farmer’s market doesn’t mean the market’s bounty isn’t available to you. More and morerestaurants are incorporating locally sourced items into their menus.

28. Don’t be afraid to ask. There’s no shame in asking your server or a manager how your food was grown or processed (though it’s probably best not to take it to this extreme).

Eating at Home

30. Turn waste into a resource. If you’ve got the inclination and a little bit of free time, give composting a try and turn food scraps into a resource that keeps on giving.

31. Revamp leftovers.Instead of dumping leftovers in the trash, turn them into new meals. It’ll reduce waste and also save on the energy it would have taken to cook a different meal the next day.

32. Double your recipes. Leftovers will last twice as long, and you’ll use less energy than you would if you cooked multiple meals.

33. Cook one local meal per week. Challenge yourself to cook one meal a week (or month!) that is composed completely of local ingredients. Get some friends in on the action and revel in doing something good for your health and the health of the planet.

Do you practice any of these habits on a regular basis? Have we missed any? Share your strategies for eating well for the planet in comments!